


Time Keeps on Slipping

by pushingcrazies



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 18:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17472665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/pseuds/pushingcrazies
Summary: Pearl and Lapis have every reason to be extremely wary of each other, at the very least. So why isn't that tension depicted in the show? Maybe they managed to work out something of a truce... for Steven's sake.





	Time Keeps on Slipping

“Steven! Steven?” Pause. “Steeeven!”

“Hm?” Pearl marked her place in her book and stood up. Amethyst was terrorizing the town, Garnet was off doing...Garnet things, and that didn’t sound like Peridot’s nasal whine. Steven was already out with Connie. Who else would be calling for Steven down on the beach?

Pearl peered out the front window down to the shore and saw - no one. The beach was empty except for the ever-present seagulls pecking at the sand. She squinted, checking for any telltale purple colouring, but no, Amethyst wasn’t disguised as a marine bird. This time, anyway.

“Steven!”

Pearl’s head jerked in the direction of the voice and found the source at last - Lapis floated a good fifty feet above the beach, circling with even more gulls. She was frowning at the house but didn’t come any closer. Trepidation flooded Pearl’s gut. Sure, Steven said Lapis was harmless, but he also said that about a giant lion and an acid-spitting corrupted gem. He was not exactly the most reliable source when it came to his own personal safety.

Still, it wouldn’t do to have Lapis out there yelling down the house when Steven wasn’t even there. Pearl opened the front door.

“Oh, there you - oh.” Lapis started to descend but stopped abruptly when she saw it was Pearl. Her hands crept up to hold her arms in a tight grip. Closed off. Her eyes slitted sideways, away from Pearl. “Sorry.”

For what? “Steven isn’t here,” Pearl said. “He’s with his human friend.”

“Oh. Uh, okay. Bye.”

“Wait,” Pearl called, taking a step forward out of the house before Lapis could fly away. “Why are you looking for him?”

Lapis’ wings beat slowly; subtly, she was rising with each flap, putting more distance between them. “He said he wanted to ‘hang out’ with me. Peridot said hanging out is something humans do to spend time together.”

“Yes,” Pearl said slowly, taking another step forward. “It’s not like Steven to miss an appointment with a… friend.” She stumbled on the word, wary to link such a warm sentiment to such a cold and angry gem like Lapis. “What time did he say he wanted to meet you?”

“Time?”

Pearl could have kicked herself. Of course. She herself had spent millenia never paying attention to how humans marked the measures of their short lives, but living with Steven had made her forget how foreign the concept is to gems who were not used to it.

“Uh, I assumed daytime,” Lapis continued hesitantly. She drifted lower. She didn’t look terrifying right now, simply confused. It was easy to forget all the power she held and what she was capable of. “Don’t humans sleep at night time?”

“They do,” Pearl said. “But they tend to be more specific about time than that.”

“Why?”

Pearl hesitated. This conversation would be so much easier if they weren’t yelling to each other across the beach and wind. What would Garnet say if she knew what Pearl was considering…? But Garnet wasn’t there, only Pearl. If this went wrong… But Steven claimed Lapis was harmless… “Why don’t you come inside and I -”

“NO!”

Pearl stepped back, automatically going into a defensive stance. Lapis’ hands dropped from her arms and clenched into fists; behind her, the waves became choppy. Pearl’s gem hummed, ready to supply her spear at a moment’s notice.

Lapis didn’t move except for the jerky beat of her wings. She didn’t seem ready to attack - yet. Pearl relaxed a fraction of an inch.

“I won’t,” Lapis said through gritted teeth, “let you trap me again.”

Pearl wanted to protest she would do no such thing - why would she? - but Lapis wouldn’t believe her. She sighed. “Wait out here, then.” She went inside.

A few minutes later, she came back and was surprised to find Lapis had actually listened and was waiting curiously at the bottom of the stairs. Her wings were tucked back into her gem. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the items Pearl carried.

“Come up here and I’ll show you.” At Lapis’ wary frown, she added with a touch of impatience, “I’m not trying to trap you.”

Lapis hesitated but then slowly climbed the stairs. Pearl held the first item out to her.

“This is a cup of what humans call ‘tea.’ It is made from dead leaves and it’s supposed to be very calming. Greg and Amethyst love it.”

“Oh! I know Greg.” Lapis took the cup from her and began swirling the tea around with her powers. “He showed me what ‘orange juice’ is. It was fun to play with.” She shaped the water into a ball floating above the cup, then stretched it out into a model of a boat. “This _is_ very relaxing,” she marvelled.

“You’re _supposed_ to drink it.”

“Why would I do that?”

Pearl sat down gracefully on the top step. After a moment Lapis joined her, two steps below. “Because that’s what it’s for. Humans don’t play with liquids, they drink them.”

“Oh. Steven and Greg didn’t tell me that part. They just let me mess around with it.” She eased the tea-ship back into the cup and released its form with a frown. She raised it to her lips and took a cautious sip. Set it aside. “That’s very good dead leaf tea,” she said unconvincingly. She pointed to the other item in Pearl’s hands. “Is that also something to drink?”

Pearl held it out so they could both look at it. “This is a clock. It’s how humans tell time.”

“Tell time? What do they tell it?”

“Well, they tell it to each other so that they can do things at the same part of the day.” Pearl pointed to the numbers around the edge of the clock. “Did Steven say any numbers when you made plans?”

Lapis scanned the clock. “The number isn’t on there.”

“What did he say?”

“Two-thirty.”

“Ah ha!” Pearl went into teacher mode and began to demonstrate. “This clock says that right now it is two-oh-eight. Steven is expecting you to meet in twenty-two minutes.”

“I don’t understand.”

Pearl cleared her throat. “Humans divide their days into twenty-four of what they call ‘hours.’”

“Ours?” Lapis repeated. “But it doesn’t belong to us. It’s their time.”

“H-o-u-r-s,” Pearl said. Steven said Lapis could read English because she was always asking for books to read. Unless she only pretended to read them. “It’s a different word even though it sounds the same. Now, every hour is divided into sixty minutes, and every minute has sixty seconds. A second lasts about the time it takes to say ‘one-thousand-one.’”

“One-thousand-one,” Lapis repeated. The seconds hand on the clock jumped one slot. “One-thousand-one. One-thousand-one. One-thousand-one. Got it. So sixty of those is a minute?”

“Yes, exactly.” Pearl beamed. “And sixty of _those_ is an hour.”

“And twenty-four of those is a day. Wow. When you break it down like that, a day sounds like an eternity,” Lapis said. Her eyes were becoming glassy, lost in thought. “There must be billions of seconds in a thousand years.”

“Lapis?”

Lapis shuddered, eyes returning to normal. She picked up her teacup and began playing with the liquid again. “If there are twenty-four hours, why are there only twelve numbers on this - this - uh…?”

“Clock,” Pearl said. “Because the numbers serve two functions. Not only do they count the hours but also the minutes. Each number represents five minutes.”

“Oh, I get it! So thirty minutes would be on the…. Six.”

“Exactly. Now, see these sticks? Each one counts the hour or the minute or the second. The one that’s moving the fastest is the seconds.”

Lapis reached over to trace the stilted movement of the seconds hand. “But the short and the long slower ones are nearly at the same point.”

“They are very close right now. As the day goes on, they’ll get further apart and then closer together again. The shorter one is the hour and the long one is minutes. The shorter one reads the number as it is, not in counts of five. So the time right now is -”

“Two,” Lapis interrupted. She put down her teacup, concentrating on the clock. “Two...two...ten? A little after ten? Eleven? Twelve? How can you tell exactly which number it is? And the seconds move so fast.” She looked away, dizzy. “It moves before you can even say what number it’s on.”

“Most humans don’t really concern themselves with the seconds,” Pearl said gently. “It’s two-twelve right now. Steven said he’d meet you at two-thirty, so you still have eighteen more minutes.”

Lapis returned her attention to her tea; it was a lot less confusing, although she couldn’t really understand why humans enjoyed putting it into their bodies. Still, water was at least familiar. “Is that a long time to wait?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Pearl said. She placed the clock next to Lapis. “You can have that, I have several.”

Lapis hesitated, then gently touched the clock’s face. This didn’t seem like a trap… And Steven trusted this Pearl, the same way he trusted Peridot. That had turned out okay. “Thanks,” Lapis said. She smiled, ever so slightly. “I should get back to the barn. That’s where he’s expecting me. I only came here to look for him.” She held out her teacup.

Pearl took the mug. This had gone surprisingly well. Lapis almost looked relaxed. Not terrifying at all. Pearl could almost see the person Steven must see when he looked at her. “You’re welcome,” she said.

Lapis’ wings popped out of her gem and she took off.


End file.
